Beauty, as they say, is in the eye of the beholder and for certain what happened Sunday at the impossibly named Crown Royal Presents the Samuel Deeds 400 at The Brickyard surely was somebody’s idea of beauty.

Not mine, mind you, but somebody’s.

First, the race was 40 laps along to its 160-lap length before there was an on-track pass and for the remainder of the race there were not many more.

Now, there are times when such lack of on track action can be appreciated.

But a stock car race at the massive 2.5-mile oval that is Indianapolis Motor Speedway is not one of them.

Again, this is my opinion.

I know, for example, of very dedicated and knowledgeable fans who can find beauty in a 1-0 National Hockey League game between the New Jersey Devils and the St. Louis Blues, or a 6-3 NCAA Division 1 football game between Alabama and LSU.

I am just not one of them.

Tony Stewart, on the other hand, probably is a huge fan of Ken Hitchcock-coached hockey teams because he thought Sunday’s NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Indianapolis was a classic.

Before I go any further, I would be remiss if I didn’t preface Stewart’s views on the race with a little insight.

Stewart is, possibly, one of the smartest, quick-witted athletes I have ever encountered. Ask him a question he thinks is stupid and he will tell you straight it’s a stupid question.

No beating around the bush for our boy Tony.

So when he was asked by Indianapolis Star columnist Bob Kravitz after Sunday’s race how to get more passing to make the Brickyard 400 less boring, Stewart’s eyes lit up like a deer hunter with a ten point buck in his sights.

“Look up ‘racing’ in the dictionary and tell me what it says in the dictionary, then look up ‘passing,’” Stewart said. “We’re racing here. That’s all I’m going to say. This is racing.”

Of course, knowing Stewart, that was definitely not all he had to say.

“If you want to see passing, we can go out on (Indiana Interstate) 465 and pass all you want.

“If you can tell me that’s more exciting than what you see at IMS, the great race car drivers that have competed here. This is about racing. This is about cars being fast. It doesn’t have to be two- and three-wide racing all day long to be good racing.”

And Stewart was just warming up.

To give him his due, there are few race car drivers in any series, anywhere with more talent than Stewart.

He’ll race just about anything with four wheels. On Monday night and again on Tuesday he will be down at Oshweeken Speedway on the Six Nations Reserve near Brantford racing Late Model dirt cars and World of Outlaws cars on a dirt track.

Stewart has few peers when it comes to knowing race cars and race tracks inside out. He orchestrated the monstrously successful NASCAR Camping World Truck Series Mudsummer Classic at his own Eldora Speedway last Wednesday to universal applause.

So when he rants about the racing at Indianapolis on Sunday it is worth a listen.

“Racing is about figuring out how to take the package you’re allowed and make it better than what everybody else has and do a better job with it,” he said. “I’ve seen races (at Indianapolis) that were won (by) over a lap, I’ve seen 20-second leads here.

“For some reason in the last 10 years, everybody is on this kick that you have to be passing all the time. It’s racing, not passing. We’re racing.

“It’s taking machines that are pretty even package-wise and let the drivers and teams figure out how to make the difference.

“I don’t understand where this big kick has come from. We need you guys’ help as much as anybody to remind people this is racing.

“When somebody does a good job, does a great job, everybody hates that. I don’t understand that. It baffles me as a race car driver.”

The problem is that a huge number of race fans pay big bucks to see action on the track, and I am not saying crashes, but close, door-to-door racing.

Stewart may well be right, that Ryan Newman’s win on Sunday in the Stewart-owned No. 39 Chevrolet may be judged a classic at some future date, but on this day it wasn’t for me.

FINISH LINES

Andrew Ranger passed Chase Elliott with 10 laps to go Sunday to win the ARCA Racing Series Barbera’s Autoland 150 at New Jersey Motorsports Park. It was the third consecutive win at the 3.68-km road course for Ranger, who started on the pole and led 30 of 67 laps ... Maryeve Dufault, of Sorel, Que., has a signed a contract to race the No. 79 Go-Green Racing Chevrolet in the Nationwide Series Sept. 14 at Chicagoland Speedway.

BRITE

INDIANAPOLIS — American Le Mans Series championship team owner Greg Pickett, who won the overall Mobil 1 SportsCar Grand Prix at Canadian Tire Motorsports Park nine days ago, is considering entering a team in the IZOD IndyCar Series next season.

Picket told Racer.com that he has a deal with Sarah Fisher Hartman Racing to let his driver, Lucas Luhr, drive the No. 97 SFHR Chevrolet at Sonoma.

Part of the deal, he said, is to allow him to be on the inside of the team during race day so he can witness first hand the operation of an IndyCar team.

Pickett has been there before, but only in providing sponsorship for his son-in-law Scott Sharp in 2009.

“I’ve been to Indy before, but that’s almost like a separate world, and we’ve also raced with IndyCar at Long Beach and Baltimore and places like that, but I’ve never been able to get plugged into the rhythm and the cadence of a normal IndyCar event,” he said. “And I was a part of Scotty’s last Indy 500 run, but that wasn’t a situation where I was in at the ground level of team operations.”

But with this deal he wants to be more involved.

“I told Sarah that we’re happy to help with making Lucas available, but what I really wanted — and she granted — was inside access. I’ll have a headset and radio to be there on pit lane to get a feel for what it’s like to run an IndyCar team, and I’ll also have some of my key people there.”

Tony Stewart fumes over 'boring' Brickyard question

Beauty, as they say, is in the eye of the beholder and for certain what happened Sunday at the impossibly named Crown Royal Presents the Samuel Deeds 400 at The Brickyard surely was somebody’s idea of beauty.

Not mine, mind you, but somebody’s.

First, the race was 40 laps along to its 160-lap length before there was an on-track pass and for the remainder of the race there were not many more.

Now, there are times when such lack of on track action can be appreciated.

But a stock car race at the massive 2.5-mile oval that is Indianapolis Motor Speedway is not one of them.

Again, this is my opinion.

I know, for example, of very dedicated and knowledgeable fans who can find beauty in a 1-0 National Hockey League game between the New Jersey Devils and the St. Louis Blues, or a 6-3 NCAA Division 1 football game between Alabama and LSU.

I am just not one of them.

Tony Stewart, on the other hand, probably is a huge fan of Ken Hitchcock-coached

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